Kasım now has a design calendar that stretches from Dubai to Cairo. Behind this calendar is the money of the Gulf, the designers of the cities destroyed by war, and a production and marketing geography in which we are a part.
I have been following design events around the world for years. Most are showcases, some are an affair. I see the design activities between the Middle East and Europe in these two poles.
Syrian architect Wesam Al Asali, who studied architecture in Damascus, did his doctorate on thin brick vaults in Cambridge, and currently teaches in Madrid, built a 256 square meter structure in the open amphitheater of Al-Hussein Cultural Center for Amman Design Week. Its name is “Tašbik”. These small, repeating vaults made of Jordanian limestone define a hybrid-use space, sometimes as a seating step, sometimes as a stage, and sometimes as a courtyard wall.
The ceilings of Gaudí in Barcelona and Grand Central in New York are built with a technique called "Catalan vault". Thin bricks are laid flat, laid two or three layers on top of each other with quick-setting plaster, no formwork required, resulting in a shell a few centimeters thick but surprisingly durable. The name of this technique is "bóveda tabicada" in Spanish, and the word "tabicada" comes from the Arabic "tašbik", meaning knitting. It is thought that the technique passed to Spain via Andalusia. It was first applied in America by the Valencian Guastavino family in the 19th century, and now Al Asali is bringing it back to the region with its own name and local stone. In his book "Cultures of Making", published this year, the designer explains the craft in the Arab geography, It tells about the relationship between famine and the environment. In my opinion, showing a structure that can be built without cement, with few materials, and with a local craftsman, in a year when reconstruction is being talked about in Damascus, is one of the most meaningful design events of this season.
Design Week is closing today in Dubai, which was damaged by the war atmosphere. Naturally, the 12th edition was a bit lackluster in the city's design district d3, but it was not cancelled. Last Thursday, the second Design Doha Biennial organized by Qatar Museums opened in Doha. The main exhibition “Arab Design Now” is curated by Bahraini architect Noura Al Sayeh: 81 designers present works, 78 of which are shown for the first time. The third Sharjah Architecture Triennial opens next Saturday. Its curator is not an architect, but anthropologist Vyjayanthi Rao. This approach offers a third-eye perspective that I find very important for this type of creative activity. The title is “Architecture Otherwise”. The speech program of the event was planned, in their own words, "in the shadow of war".
The economy of the design map in the Middle East has three corners. On the one hand, there is the Gulf capital, the Vision 2030 documents, the "cultural years" in which Qatar is paired with a country every year, and national wealth funds that accumulate oil revenue. Design is considered a "development sector" in this region, like museums and airports. On the other hand, according to westerners, there are talented people in the Levant region who had to leave this region for sociopolitical reasons. Beirut, which never stopped, went bankrupt in 2019, had a huge explosion in its port in 2020, and was bombed in 2024. The fate of this city is best read in Etel Adnan's verses. Of course, like everyone else, a significant portion of regional designers moved to Dubai. The architects of Damascus, Baghdad and Gaza are working in London, Madrid and Doha today.
The third corner I mentioned is production: The carpenters of Damietta, the furniture city in the Nile delta, and Turkey's furniture factories bear the burden of geography. For both the Cairo designer and the Turks, the issue is exchange rate difference and economy before aesthetics. In Cairo, imported materials are purchased with a currency that has lost more than half of its value since 2022. I won't talk about the economic conditions for Türkiye, but it is worth remembering that the fact that a complex region like Iraq has been at the top of Turkish furniture exports for years adds to these conditions.
War continues to be the only reality of this geography for many years. Doha was hit twice last year, by Iranian missiles in June and by an Israeli attack in September, but the biennial was not postponed! This year, Sharjah exhibited archives from Baghdad, Damascus and Tunisia collected by Beirut architectural historian George Arbid, mostly drawings collected from private hands. When talking about the effect of war on creativity, one inevitably falls into romanticism. I find the creativity inspired by pain a waste of time for design. We are not artists and we must move past the pain and be constructive.
Of course, I am not talking about ignoring the suffering geography, what is happening is obvious. We can see, for example, in the vault of Al Asali, that when materials became scarce due to the events, the craft immediately came back. When the archives burn, memory seems to turn into an obsession. Amman's title this year is "Savings" and it's not for nothing.
Edward Said called the exile's view "contrapuntal", which means seeing two places at once, like hearing two melodies in music at the same time. The perspective of the displaced is dual: this is exactly the work of Dima Srouji, a Palestinian architect living in London. The forms blown by glass masters from the village of Jaba near Ramallah resemble archaeological finds, but they are contemporary productions. There is currently a great repair culture prevalent in the region. We cannot ignore these because they are the elements that shape creativity.
It seems to me that Istanbul stands at the production corner of this triangle. We don't have policies or funds for design and we're still struggling on our own terms. We produce but we do not tell. How valid a platform do our designers, who run from place to place with their own financing, have in this country? I keep thinking about this, even under the Middle East missile attacks and unrest before our eyes, we never let go of design.
